Life Patterns (repost)

If we observe the people who walk into our lives – whether they are there to stay, or are only briefly touching our existence with their presence – we will see that they often resemble one another in character. It is not uncommon to hear people say: “I’ve married my mother” or “I’ve married my father”.


This fact struck me several years ago, when I met a girl who was involved into a very abusive relationship. She told me she was planning on leaving her spouse, and starting a new life. I talked about it with my own husband and we agreed that it would be okay for her to stay with us for a while, at least until she got on her feet. During the few months she lived with us, she opened up a little and told us that this was the fourth abusive relationship she had been into. I was dumbstruck. The odds of running into one abusive relationship are probably fifty-fifty, but running into four of them by the age of thirty-one could not be coincidental. It was almost as if this girl had a label pasted on her forehead, advertising that she was looking for yet another violent man. Then, one night she told me that her father was abusive to her mother and to her. He had beaten both of them physically and verbally, until the mother decided to get out of the marriage and jump into yet another abusive relationship. That, suddenly, explained it all.


As children, we absorb whatever is being fed to us, whether it is praise or judgment, respect or abuse. After taking it all in, the child has no clue what to do with it. The baggage of emotional charge connected to the events long pushed away is not discharged but safely tucked into a secret chest in the attic of the mind. Once put away and dulled by the passing of time, the child pretends it is not there, and attempts to create a life different than the one he or she dreamt of escaping.


Although the new life appears full of promise, the unreleased pain is still screaming to be taken out of its hideout and be sorted out; since the owner of the chest is not willing to take the heavy old thing out of the attic, afraid of reliving the emotional charge connected to the events tucked away, the pain trickles out of the aging, rotten wood, and sneaks out uninvited, haunting the chambers of the subconscious mind and triggering behaviors which promote unhealthy lifestyles. The wounded child is still alive and well, and needs to understand whether he or she is to blame for what happened so long ago.


Youth therapists draw painful occurrences from the well of children’s subconscious minds through role play. It is amazing what will come up from those sessions; the children reenact the very same things that have caused a trauma in their young life, over and over. As adults we do the same; we recreate in our new life the same situations we tried to escape as children, simply to understand the role we played in the unfolding of those past events. We are attracted to and attract people who will support our role play, and the pattern will continue until we have identified the matrix, and dealt with the emotional charge we put away so long ago.


Observing our life patterns will not solve all our problems, but will provide us with a valuable hint to get started in our search. All we need to do is look around ourselves and, for once, not be afraid of the monsters in the attic.

The Roles We Play

It’s funny how humans thrive on drama.
No matter what issue arises, we look for things to argue about, which will cause a stir. We can observe this flaw in the political arena, in religion, in life itself.
Of course, when we stand by a certain point - and look for confirmation through facts - we are likely to seek those corroborating facts from sources that share our point of view and look at the issue from the same angle we are. Everyone is going to have different opinions, different facts to quote, and different outlooks directly related to personal experiences and taught values.
It is very amusing to watch talk shows. Producers make a living from human drama, and saturate our media with a circus of flaring emotions and half-baked truths. Soap operas last for decades and hook staggering numbers of people through glittering drama, often exposing human flaws that nobody wants to recognize in themselves, yet are present in most of us.
We thrive on the negative, and several studies have shown that negative messages are more easily implanted in the subconscious than positive ones. That’s what political campaigns and organized religions thrive on to get their point across.
So, why do we thrive on negativity and drama?
No matter what our religious affiliation, anyone at all comfortable with spiritual truth halfway believes that we are here for a reason, and we came to earth to learn something.
Our soul is here to learn basic lessons of compassion, forgiveness, unity, and tolerance, and we are all actors on the great stage life. By acting out our roles we understand the nuances behind the human drama, and learn our lessons throughout.
Sadly, most of us forget we are the actors and blindly become the part we came to play. We become so engrossed in our role that we blend our identity with the character we impersonate. We all forget who we truly are, until something devastating in our lives knocks down our ego and reminds us of what is truly important.
Regardless of the fact that some believe in reincarnation and some don’t, we all agree that we only have one life at a time to be in, and we need to make the most of our time while we are here.
Focusing on the present, and choosing to overcome the drama we so easily become attached to, can free us from the chains of erroneous earthly perception and give us an edge in understand who we truly are.